tl;dr
There are three ways for you to configure your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS):
If you keep track of them in Shopify, we are automatically importing the "cost per item" field for you.
By setting COGS as a percentage of the Net Selling Price in the Cost section of the menu.
By defining the actual costs per SKU using a Google Sheet in the datasource section (for Amazon use ASIN instead of SKU)
Option 1 - Automatic COGS import from Shopify.
Keep track of your COGS values in the "cost per item" field in Shopify.
We are automatically importing these values for your specific products.
COGS values entered in Klar's COGS sheet will override your Shopify values. So if you want to continue relying on the sheet you can do that. Otherwise set an end date to all entries in the sheet to that point in time where you want us to pull the Shopify values.
Note: You can select two different settings in the Shopify data source in Klar:
1) Use product information at checkout (snapshot info): Here we pull the COGS true to time, i.e. always the value that was stored in the “cost per item” field at the time the order was placed.
2) Use product information from catalog: Here we pull the COGS value stored in the “cost per item” field for the entire history
Option 2- Defining COGS as a Percentage.
Click on your shop datasource and choose the "Costs" section in the menu.
Press the + Button and select COGS
Set your COGS as a percentage of the net selling price (meaning excl. VAT). If the net price of one of your products is €100 and you set the percentage to 32%, we will set the COGS of that product to €32.
Optional: If you want you can define different COGS rates for different Date Ranges (see video for detail).
Give the cost structure a name, assign it to the relevant stores (or stores if multiple apply), and save it.
Option 3 - Setting COGS for each SKU
Go to Data Sources in the menu.
Press the + Button and select COGS as a datasource.
Give it a name (eg. COGS) and save it.
Click the three dots on the created datasource and select Open Google Sheet.
Enter your SKUs and their respective costs in the Sheet. The product name is only there to help you to identify your product. The matching happens via the SKU.
If you don't want to specify costs for specific dates, you can leave them empty. That will be your default value. If you want to specify a date range, make sure that the SKU with a date range is below the same SKU without a date range as we will use the SKU with a matching date range that is lowest in the list should multiple entries match.
Every 10-15 minutes, new entries will be uploaded. If you want, you can click the three dots on the datasource in Klar and press sync data which will start a sync within a minute. Once successfully uploaded, Column G System Use will indicate so.
What Options should I choose?
If you have a lot of products that all have a similar COGS percentage, using the percentage (Option 2) should give you accurate enough results with minimal setup time.
If your COGS percentages vary wildly between products and/or time ranges, setting the COGS via an actual value (in Shopify or the sheet) is the way to go.
You can also use multiple options at the same time. Costs defined per SKU (Option 3) take priority over costs defined in Shopify (Option 1) or as a percentage (Option 2).
Therefore, you could define actual costs, maybe even using date ranges, for your top-selling products and also set a percentage that will then be used for the long tail of your product catalogue.
That should give you very accurate results with very limited investment and/or ongoing maintenance.